XForms

Mark Birbeck's picture

An introduction to XForms submission

This introduction contains a high-level look at XForms submission. For those new to a declarative approach to programming it's probably easier to understand what XForms submission does by looking at the kinds of procedural code it replaces. Since the approach most familiar to web programmers will be the use of JavaScript in an Ajax application we'll begin there, before then moving on to XForms.

Unexpected end of file exception

"" A fatal error occurred in formsPlayer: ox8004020e. Schema ""theSchema"" for model ""(null)"" is not well formed: Unexpected end of input. At (null)

We have a customer that is able to reproduce this error quite easily.
We cannot reproduce and were not able to duriong Paul's visit

Screen shot attached

"This page contains both secure and nonsecure items. Do you want to display the nonsecure items?"

This message appears whenthe xforms is attempting to display in a browser

"This page contains both secure and nonsecure items. Do you want to display the nonsecure items?"

Paul has looked at this problem whilst he was visiting RDM.
He emntioned that it had to to with initializing using the "blank" page as a shrotcut (or something)

Upload image causes browser to crash - Vista only

Using our config forms for our WebClient 1.2 (Paul has a copy), use Vista / ie7 and on the first tab select "Endorsement Details" in the combo box.
Check "Electronic Logo Endorsement"
Use the Upload control to browse a logo.
Click the Save button at the bottom

Will get a dialog, that Internet Explorer has stopped working and two options display:
1. Check on line for solution...,
2. restart the program.

Inappropriate display of message element text

There is a string displayed on initial load of the form
I have a submission element that contains a message element with ev:event="xforms-submit-error"

<xforms:message level="modal" ev:event="xforms-submit-error" class="top">Failed to save.</xforms:message>

The contents of the message element appears in the window before the xform is fully rendered. (Failed to save.)
I have also tried placing the message inside an action element - same result.
Have seen this 'forever'

combo box items apear in body of tab intermittantly

Our xform screen is made up of tabs.
Each tab has a combo box at the top of the tab body
On intial display the combo box items may appear written accross the top of the tab body
Tabbing around seems to make it go away.
Have seen this since > 1.5.7.1006

Another similar display funniness is on inital load of the form.
I have a submission element that contains a message element with ev:event="xforms-submit-error"
The contents of the message element appears in the window before the xform is fully rendered.
I have also tried placing the message inside an action element - same result.
Have seen this 'forever'

Flickering problem depending on the number of items in a repeated control

When moving from a form to another one (using the navigation bar in the "Support" panel) we have flickering problems.

If you watch the screencast (global_refresh.avi)carefully, you'll notice that when the outgoing form (page 4/72 at the "Support" panel level) contains more repeated items in the repeated group of controls "Locuteurs, type, message-clé, tonalité" than the upcoming form (page 5/72 at the "Support" panel level) then we have like a global refresh of the screen during the navigation. On the other hand when moving from a form (5/72) that contains less or the same number of repeated items then the upcoming form (6/72) the global refresh won't occurs.

Memory problems? Xforms or javascript errors?

We split out the recurring code from our application into a test page. Many of the problems we see in our application are reproduced in this smaller stand alone page. We didn't waste any time trying to make it pretty in the stand alone page.

Dates can be generated based on a periodic or weekly basis. Starting values are added to the test page for easier testing.

These are the problems that are sometimes seen. Reload the page to see different problems.

1. Sometimes IE crashes. The crash can occur some time after a user action.

Whitespace in input control from valid XML

In recent versions of formsplayer, XML that used to behave properly is no longer doing so.
For example, XML containing the following 'A' element would historically be displayed in an input control as an empty string.
<Sample>
<A>
</A>
</Sample>
Now, the input control displays several spaces.

One way around this is to rewrite the XML as follows:
<Sample>
<A/>
</Sample>

However, when this XML is sumbitted (using Put method), the format of the XML is changed to that described in example 1
When the XML is redisplayed we again have the whitespace issue described at the outset.

Alert for Upload control does not display

I have an element called ../EndorsementLogo/Data as a refrence to an Upload control
The element has an associated xsd entry that limits the size of the base64Binary data to 3072 base64 characters.
I added an alert element to the upload control that says 'Maximum image size 2048 bytes'
When I select a file that is withing the xsd limits everything is ok.
When I select a file that is too big I get the "Failed to save" dialog indicating the the data did not pass the xsd check however the alert message does not appear.